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GM introduces expensive truck for heavy loads

Savannah Morning News

Lauren Mann, fleet and commercial promotions manager at GM. looks at one of the automaker's new heavy-duty trucks on display at the Arlington Convention Center in Arlington, Texas, Tuesday, September 12, 2006. (Darrell Byers/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT)

ARLINGTON, Texas - Believe it or not, even a great big pickup isn't big or strong enough for some people who haul horses, boats and race cars.

Now a Michigan company has teamed with General Motors to offer a truck that meets the needs of drivers who need a really, really big pickup.

A pickup on steroids, you might say. Except the Chevrolet Kodiak and GMC Topkick are designed to fit and to drive so easily that a small person can comfortably drive one down the highway.

For a price that can approach, or even surpass $90,000, Monroe Truck Equipment of Flint, Mich., will take a basic medium-duty GM truck - the kind otherwise meant to haul freight, become tow trucks, snowplows and the like - and turn it into a luxurious but powerful tool for towing large, heavy trailers long distances.

Monroe, which makes and installs custom equipment for commercial trucks, hatched the idea for the big pickup in 2002 after GM introduced a much-improved truck lineup.

"It was a hunch," says Rick Rufenacht, Monroe's vice president of marketing.

A Kodiak or Topkick, says Rufenacht, drives, turns and handles like a Chevy Suburban, meaning it can go to the grocery store or mall without needing a quarter-mile-wide parking space.

The market isn't enormous. Monroe built only about a 1,000 of the trucks in 2005, but with the latest packages has set its sights on 1,200 to 1,500 this year.

That compares with the roughly 2.4 million light-duty pickups that manufacturers sold in the U.S. last year, 75 percent built by GM and Ford.

Many buyers own and haul race and show cars, or very large boats or show valuable livestock.

Then there are the horse people, many of them hauling animals worth high five or six figures, who think nothing of hauling their valuable merchandise hundreds and even thousands of miles on a trip.

Up to now, they've had to make do with a large 1-ton pickup; think a Ford F-350. But those aren't big, strong and durable enough for repeated long-distance trips with heavy loads.